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 The Body
Robotic Form, function, and the future as seen through the
eyes and handiwork of three GW roboticists.
By Danny Freedman | photography by Jessica McConnell Burt
One of them aspires to be on the battlefield. Another, in the home as a
domestic aide. Others aim to perform surgeries and to chauffeur the tired,
the busy, and the infirm.
They are unseasoned immigrants to these parts of the work-
force, though, and are about as green as they come. Numb to
social cues and the tug of common sense, they bring only a heat-
seeking determination.
“In the last couple decades robots started roaming out of the
industrial corridor,” says Pinhas Ben-Tzvi, an assistant professor
of mechanical and aerospace engineering. “They’re swimming,
they are flying, they are walking.”
But in order for robots to fully merge into society’s fast lane, as
they are being coaxed to do, they will need a depth that is almost
more than the sum of their parts: They will need to perceive the
world around them and make complicated decisions that power
sophisticated maneuvering. And they’ll need to do it all inside
the tangled and fragile mess called daily life.
Here, three modern-day Geppettos working on the
future of robotic perception, control, and mechanics open
their workshops and share visions of a new generation of
robots: ones that will walk alongside U.S. soldiers, pull
victims from rubble, and lend a hand—or something like
a hand—around the house.
To test perception algorithms being designed for high-profile robots like Boston
Dynamics' AlphaDog and an autonomous car by Toyota, Dr. Sibley's lab has built
five "gymnastic, parkour-style" robots, including this one, nicknamed Herbie.

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Herbie and the other "ninja cars" are built from
off-the-shelf remote-controlled cars, which over
the years, Dr. Sibley says, have become rugged,
light, and inexpensive.
Gabe Sibley
Department of Computer Science
Sample projects: robotic perception
for Boston Dynamics’ LS3 robot and
for an autonomous car by Toyota
We look for algorithms that are the
underpinning of perception and action
and use them to build autonomous
machines that can perform useful tasks.
Using cameras and computer vision we
try to teach robots how to “see”—how
to understand the spatial and semantic
context they share with us. So that’s:
Where am I? Where and what are objects of
interest here?
We have to compute these solutions
quickly, fast enough so that, for example,
if I’m a robot running through the woods
I can avoid hitting trees and stepping in
the wrong place.
To do that the robot has to build a
mental picture of the world, like an internal
Pixar movie. That’s then used to make
decisions—specifying an action and simu-
lating the physics to predict the result.
It’s planning over that mental model,
like a gymnast visualizing the flip and
tumble before they do it; imagining
what would happen and using the
results to execute the move.
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My work focuses on that fast and accu-
rate perception of the world, as well as
the high-speed planning and control. It’s
called perception-driven model-predictive-
control, and we use it for fast and agile
ground vehicles that jump, slide, and
bounce over complicated 3D terrain.
F or Toyota’s autonomous cars we’re
working on robust perception, plan-
ning, and control algorithms capable of
negotiating degraded conditions: driving at
night, driving in the rain, or snow.
Cars that drive themselves will need
to understand the road in difficult situa-
tions. It’s not always going to be a sunny
drive in California—sometimes it’s going
to be sliding sideways at night in Sweden.
In these radical situations we still want to
come up with the right answer. To do that,
our goal is to develop perception, planning,
and control systems that supersede even
Mario Andretti’s.
We’re doing essentially the same
thing for platforms like LS3, nicknamed
AlphaDog. [More formally, that is Boston
Dynamics’ Legged Squad Support System,
a four-legged, all-terrain pack mule, being
built for the military, that will be capable
of traveling autonomously, either alone or
trailing soldiers.]
It’s a very similar problem. Robust
perception is so hard from a platform that
can bound through very rough terrain at
excessive speeds, making it difficult to see
what is going on from the on-board camera.
So we have to take that very blurry, noisy
image data, inertial data, and other sensor
data and make sense of them to build accu-
rate internal world models.
As a test platform for these algorithms
we have these small, fast, and robust ground
vehicles that can handle high-speed jumps.
Imagine putting a small robot inside a skate
park and turning it loose.
The students call that project “ninja
car” but it’s really about the perception,
the modeling and tracking of what it’s
seeing. And much more, even, it’s about the
planning side of that: coming up with the
choices to make in order to hit that jump,
and to land at the right spot, at exactly the
right angle, so it can hit the next jump in
order to go off the half-pipe at just the
right velocity and not crash.
A utonomous cars are going to
completely change the way we
relate to the automobile. When people
are driving about 55 miles per hour, only
12 percent of the highway is occupied by
a vehicle—that’s because people don’t
want to get too close to each other.
Because it’s scary. We’re really bad at
driving in these machines. And we can
build autonomous systems that don’t
have to look in mirrors to see backwards.
They’re looking 360 degrees all the time.
Fifty years from now our children will
say: Wait a second—did you really get in those
metal boxes and push and pull levers and gears
to make them move? Wasn’t that dangerous?
Why didn’t you have the computer do it? And
they’ll be right. When you grab the wheel
your insurance premium will just go up.
Of course, there are all sorts of fun soci-
ological issues, legal issues, and policy issues.
There’s just no practical way to go from
kind-of autonomous— where we are now,
with systems for things like lane-keeping
and parking—to fully autonomous. What
we have to do is make cars that are capable
of driving in human traffic.
When you commute you can take a nap
or maybe do your email. If you’re impaired,
you don’t have to be chauffeured around.
It’s going to be more efficient. It’s going to
be better for the environment. Autonomous
highways are going to revolutionize society.
Pinhas Ben-Tzvi
Department of Mechanical &
Aerospace Engineering
Sample projects: mobile robotics,
including work for the military’s
Defense Advanced Research Projects
Agency (DARPA), and robotic surgery
My lab conducts fundamental and
applied research in robotics and mecha-
tronics (the synergy of mechanics,
electronics, and computer control in an
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 Dr. Ben-Tzvi’s novel hybrid mechanism allows
both this robot’s arm and traction mechanism
to be dual-purpose, with either capable of
aiding movement or manipulation. A pop-up
vision system and a gripper (both visible
at right) retract into the arm, enabling the
robot to be flat and flippable. Front and back
cameras, lights, and sonar are embedded near
the tracks to guide a remote operator.

integrated design). The beauty of trans-

forming that fundamental research into
different applications is what drives me.
For instance, we are working on devel-
oping mobile robotic systems for search-
and-rescue applications, for reconnaissance,
for inspection, for monitoring; they could
also be used for handling improvised explo-
sive devices and bomb disposal. We are
also working on medical applications, like
robotic systems for surgery.
The goal is to benefit from robots, to
have a better, safer, healthier, and easier life.

I was motivated by 9/11. I read a lot of

articles about how robots were able
to do some useful tasks but weren’t
dexterous enough or robust enough to
reach deeper into the rubble.
The prevailing design of mobile
robots is based on a traction mechanism
for locomotion, with a separate arm
attached on top for manipulation. But if
a robot like that is used on rough terrain
and it flips, the arm could break.
So I came up with this idea that I
call the hybrid mechanism. It has links
that can be used interchangeably for
locomotion and manipulation—and also
do both simultaneously.
It gives the system far greater capa-
bilities. For example, if you’re trying
to lift something, imagine being able
to use your leg as an arm. You’d be
able to lift a lot more. The robot has
tracks on the bottom so it can travel
on rough terrain, and the arm can be
used as leverage for things like climbing
obstacles, going up and down stairs
or over ditches and other terrains. An
integrated hand can be used to open
doors. The robot is fully symmetrical
when the arm is folded down, so it can
flip and still continue operating.

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Employing the brawn of a ready-made PR2 robot, nicknamd Pepe, Dr. Drumwright's lab is focusing on
the brainpower needed to make robots more useful in the home, particularly for elder care.
It is tele-operated now but we’re
working on another DARPA project to
do those things autonomously. We’re
using a vision-based navigation system
we developed and other sensors—like a
camera in the palm of the hand, stereo
vision for depth perception, laser scan-
ners for accurate measurements of what’s
in front of the robot—that allow you to
plan the motions needed, for example, in
order to climb difficult obstacles.
Search-and-rescue robots also have to be
able to act and react safely. If a robot has a
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significant amount of force and acts without
feedback on an object—or a person—it’s
going to do more damage than good.
We’re working on continuum mecha-
nisms for these mobile platforms. Typical
robot arms are made up of articulated
rigid links. That would be replaced by an
arm that is continuously flexible—it’s
a flexible unit with multiple segments
that allow it to bend like a snake or an
elephant trunk.
If the robot exerts too much force,
the continuum arm will inherently bend
around the object without damaging it.
(Rigid-link mechanisms can be made
“smart,” too, but the added sensors and
controls to do that can complicate the
system and make it more prone to failures.)
The same idea, only scaled down, can
apply to robotic surgery—using the flex-
ible arm to prevent inadvertent damage
to organs, for instance, from sudden
movements. I’m working with surgeons at
GW on developing designs for its use in
colorectal surgeries.
Another project is called STORM,
for Self-Configurable and Transformable
Omni-Directional Robotic Modules.
These are robotic pieces that can assemble
into a larger robot and later disassemble.
[For example, three small modules could
link together to create one robot that
looks similar to the hybrid mobile robot
on Pg. 21.]
If you want to tackle a rubble pile you
could send a fixed-configuration robot,
but what happens if it doesn’t fit or
encounters a fence? It’s stuck.
Mission failed.
This robot, using a vision system or
other sensors, would see it can’t fit and
then start disassembling. The robotic
pieces would swarm inside the void and
communicate with each other wirelessly. If
one finds a person stuck under a concrete
slab, it can call for the others and connect
into a larger configuration capable of
handling larger payloads. Once the task
is performed, they disassemble and find
something else to do.
R obotics research is very multi-disci-
plinary, so I’ve created a group that
reflects that. Having the ability to do all
the disciplines in-house while the students
interact and learn from one another, I
think that’s unique.
I like to see the big picture. You can
have a skeleton but, without the tissues, the
muscles, the senses, and the brain, it can’t
do anything. I see robotics in a similar way:
the mechanism, the motors and actuators,
the sensors, the wire connections, and the
processor work together to bring the robotic
system to life.
4/17/13 7:31 AM
 Evan
Drumwright
Department of Computer Science
Sample projects: manipulation,
efficient control, and balance
We don’t have many robots in the home.
We’ve got the Roomba, and the same
company also has a similar thing called
Scooba for cleaning floors, and we’ve
got some toy robots. But we really don’t
have anything that can help us that
much in the home. That’s one of the
things that I’m really interested in.
I use a PR2 [manufactured by Willow
Garage], which is a very capable robot.
The creator wanted a robot that could
make him breakfast. My vision is a
robot to help me get around when I’m
old and have just a couple marbles
rolling around in my head—to help
care for me so I don’t put that burden
on family or have to pay people who
don’t have a real incentive to do a great
job taking care of me.
It may not necessarily be doing health
care, but more like changing a light bulb
or doing some mild cleaning—you’d be
amazed at the number of things that
elderly people need help with.
there one thing we can do here that can
indicate we can do 10 other things?
One important task we’re focusing on
is opening doors. It’s something that all
robots will need to do and there’s been
limited success. If you have a particular
kind of door—one that the robot has
been specially programmed to open—it
can open it. It’s not anywhere as smooth
as a human, but they can do it.
But think of all the different kinds of
doors we encounter. You’ve got doors
where it’s not clear even to humans
whether you push them or pull them.
I was just in a Starbucks in Japan and
thought a door was locked, but it turned
out to be a sliding door.
What I’d like for the robot to be able
to do is open any door autonomously. It’s
a problem that’s part perception (Have I
seen this door before?), part modeling (How
do I think the mechanism behind the door oper-
ates?), and part mechanical.
We want the robot to be able to learn
from doors that it’s opened before. And
if the robot hasn’t seen a type of door
before, we want it to push and poke until
it figures out how the mechanism works.
W e’ve also been working on balance.
If somebody gave me skis and
goggles and a hat—or in the context of
We’ve also been working on efficiency
in control. One of my Ph.D. students was
just in Italy for three months working
with a quadrupedal robot to test our
method of inverse dynamics control.
Basically, the idea behind that is accu-
rately determining what forces need to
be applied to the robot’s motors to make
something happen, without using too
much energy. If I’m picking up that vase
and I know how much water is in it, how
much force do I need to apply to pick it
up? If I’ve got a powerlifter picking up a
tiny little vase with all his strength, it’s
not going to be good for energy usage or
for accuracy.
It turns out to be a really hard problem
to solve because determining what forces
to apply to the robot’s motors is coupled
to determining the friction forces that are
at the robot’s feet. The two have to be
figured out simultaneously, and our
method does that.
This could help improve the accuracy of
movement for any robot that comes into
contact with its environment—so, basically
everything except flying robots—including
movement on sticky surfaces, like asphalt,
and slick surfaces, like ice and metal. GW

O ne of the things I’ve been working

on has been manipulation, trying to
get the robot to do things dexterously, like a
human would do, and to do them at higher
speeds and in dynamic environments.
There’s a famous video where a PR2
folds towels. It takes, I want to say, about
30 minutes for the robot to fold one towel.
People see the promise in what the robot’s
doing but it’s so slow they start to joke:
OK, well a $400,000 robot folds one towel in 30
minutes, so this will be practical … when?
The other problem is that the
robots are always doing these things in
controlled environments. PR2 stands
for Personal Robot 2. It’s meant to be in
your house doing things alongside you.
We don’t want to focus on getting the
robot to do one thing at a time and creating
a library of tasks. More importantly: Is
helping the elderly, groceries—how would
I carry them? How would a robot do that?
One of the ways we did this was through
force feedback in the robot’s arms. If you’re
going to pick up an opaque vase you have
an idea of how much that vase weighs. If
somebody had unexpectedly put water into
it, then all of the sudden you’d get thrown
for a loop. Where you determined that
things went awry, that was because of force
feedback in your arms.
We used that to balance objects on the
PR2’s arms and we ended up being able
to do it really well, whereas in the past
you would have used the robot’s vision,
which is just not as well suited for it.
Robots opening doors autonomously is one task
Dr. Drumwright is trying to crack. Faced with a
new type of door, “we want it to push and poke
until it figures out how the mechanism works.”

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